Steven Crook, an Australian-born skiddy seam bowler and hard-hitting lower-order batsmen, started his first-class career at Lancashire but had limited chances to show his worth. After a loan move to Northamptonshire at the end of the 2005 season, he made a permanent switch for 2006 where he earned greater chances in the one-day arena. Injury ravaged much of his time at Northants but he found other outlets to express himself as a lead singer of the band Juliet the Sun. The Sun newspaper even credited their track, Time For Heroes, as a reason that England won the Ashes.

Musically feted by England-selling tabloid or not, Crook found satisfaction hard to find. At the end of the 2009 season, he stepped away from professional cricket, but returned after a trial period with Middlesex to earn a two-year contract. He became a regular in the one-day and Twenty20 sides, but less so in the Championship - where he neither merited a top six batting slot nor a place as a frontline bowler - and his desire for more four-day cricket prompted a move back to Northamptonshire at the end of the 2012 campaign.

Crook's first season back at the County Ground was a success. He was one of Northants' key performers in all three formats in 2013, none more vital than a man-of-the-match performance against Essex in the Friends Life t20 as Northants went on to win the trophy at Edgbaston.

But cricket was never going to dominate his life entirely. "Do some cricket, do some music, do some business but mainly do fun things that test the bounds of reality," he wrote on his Twitter feed.